Critics of mass immigration have a point, and should not be discarded as ignorant bigots. Even if they often are.
What changed my mind: seeing neighborhoods inhabited almost exclusively by poor immigrants. And rich immigrants. Both in their own exclusive enclaves.
The only ones that don’t form enclaves are middle class immigrants.
I know this isn’t supposed to be a change-my-mind but I don’t think that’s correct.
All humans are more likely to move near to others they identify with. The same thing happens with progressives or conservatives moving to different cities, so i don’t think it can be exlusive to just two social classes of recent immigrants.
All humans are more likely to move near to others they identify with. The same thing happens with progressives or conservatives moving to different cities, so i don’t think it can be exlusive to just two social classes of recent immigrants.
This is true and I also see it as a problem. Immigrants are just the most obvious case.
honestly this is mostly a result of disenfranchisement, not immigration itself. the middle class has a reason to fight through that, while lower classes are protected by their own against a hostile society. make society less hostile and the problem solves itself.
but if you wanna solve mass immigration, you should strive for global equality. even when given unrestricted immigration prospects, people tend to stay put when they don’t have a strong reason to move, and if you knock out economic and military reasons, most immigration tends to happen due to relationships and it’s fairly balanced.
insisting to prevent mass immigration in ways other than trying to solve the root reasons is just insistence on a privileged place in global hierarchy. i don’t think that’s morally sound in any situation.
Immigration is a great thing, but I think assimilation should be heavily encouraged to promote social cohesion. Stuff like resources for language learning and the host country’s way of doing things should be pushed more aggressively. I just cringe when my dad who’s been here 16 years barely knows english and doesnt bother to learn, and then mom is still doing the idiosyncracies of their culture. (dad is still on greencard, never got citizenship cuz the engrish issue)
But thankfully the 2nd and 3rd generations tend to do great (I’m 1.5 gen), but this basically breaks a family that’s caught between the immigration-generation divide. Like there’a just this whole entire world of me they would never understand.
(This comment isnt meant as a “trashtalking” my parents, its just that I can feel the “crack” in my family of origin)
There can be enclaves or castes without mass immigration. In fact, a bunch of suburban and rural communities feel like enclaves where no outsiders can feel welcome.
Critics of mass immigration or open borders have a point- in a world with global travel and trade, a country cannot work without controlling who can come in and who can work.
Critics of anti immigration politicians also have a point- blaming social problems on immigrants, fueling hate for people whose skin has a different tone, and inhumanely denying aid and shelter from refugees are not going to help anyone.
The world is changing and it’s difficult to cope. I don’t think that the enclaves of immigrants are the main reason of those challenges. It’s the loneliness epidemic due to social media use, the affordability crisis due to unchecked corporate greed with political corruption, and the collapse of perspectives for meaningful and lucrative careers due to AI and the corporate takeover of everything. Those changes are faster and more profound than a bunch of immigrants moving in next door, please look beyond them.
tbh as far as those lucrative jobs go, a lot of americans and western europeans also have some reckoning to do. especially in the us, a lot of those jobs come from selling a service to the whole world, which siphons a bunch of money from a whole lot of different countries into the us. so why should only americans be allowed to work those jobs? and if the rest of the world gets tired at that, why shouldn’t they just cut those companies off and make domestic competitors?
it’s crazy that we live in a world where you can do the same job as someone else in the same western coalition – and increasingly, in the same global trading order – and often do it for the same global companies, and yet, get paid wildly differently just based on where you’re from. as long as that is the case, in my opinion it’s already unfair to an immigrant that they had to immigrate to get access to the same opportunities someone else has by default. anti-immigration rhetoric is just deepening that injustice.
I struggle with observing the mass immigration as well. Partly, because we have housing crisis in my country and the middle class is shrinking. But I believe it’s a lot because of a rate of change. High visible and sudden growth in a minority population, which is tending to collect in enclaves because there’s a housing crisis and they can rent an illegal boarding house space from a richer immigrant. Enclaves tend to diminish the rate at which they learn local language and cultural norms. They get taken advantage of because they don’t know the language (someone helps them with eg an identity card but charges them thousands for it). There’s no real jobs, just bottom of the economy gig work. It’s not fair to them.
For the people living here they see a ton of brown people coming in and inflation and housing rising so fast and the math is easy for them to do (even if it is wrong).
It happened in New York with the Irish and Italians too. It’s not a new thing.
For a functional society, it’s members must share the same physical and mental space. Even if individuals radically disagree with the status-quo, they are still a part of the same in-group. I call it a “rebel vs invader” dilemma. Rebels can succeed in changing a society, invaders will be resisted.
Critics of mass immigration have a point, and should not be discarded as ignorant bigots. Even if they often are.
What changed my mind: seeing neighborhoods inhabited almost exclusively by poor immigrants. And rich immigrants. Both in their own exclusive enclaves. The only ones that don’t form enclaves are middle class immigrants.
What a delightfully circular argument.
Those neighbourhoods aren’t the fault of the immigrants.
I know this isn’t supposed to be a change-my-mind but I don’t think that’s correct.
All humans are more likely to move near to others they identify with. The same thing happens with progressives or conservatives moving to different cities, so i don’t think it can be exlusive to just two social classes of recent immigrants.
This is true and I also see it as a problem. Immigrants are just the most obvious case.
honestly this is mostly a result of disenfranchisement, not immigration itself. the middle class has a reason to fight through that, while lower classes are protected by their own against a hostile society. make society less hostile and the problem solves itself.
but if you wanna solve mass immigration, you should strive for global equality. even when given unrestricted immigration prospects, people tend to stay put when they don’t have a strong reason to move, and if you knock out economic and military reasons, most immigration tends to happen due to relationships and it’s fairly balanced.
insisting to prevent mass immigration in ways other than trying to solve the root reasons is just insistence on a privileged place in global hierarchy. i don’t think that’s morally sound in any situation.
people immigrant because their countries are corrupt, violent, and unstable, not poor.
inequality isn’t the issue so much as stability is the issue, because you cannot grow without stability.
Immigration is a great thing, but I think assimilation should be heavily encouraged to promote social cohesion. Stuff like resources for language learning and the host country’s way of doing things should be pushed more aggressively. I just cringe when my dad who’s been here 16 years barely knows english and doesnt bother to learn, and then mom is still doing the idiosyncracies of their culture. (dad is still on greencard, never got citizenship cuz the engrish issue)
But thankfully the 2nd and 3rd generations tend to do great (I’m 1.5 gen), but this basically breaks a family that’s caught between the immigration-generation divide. Like there’a just this whole entire world of me they would never understand.
(This comment isnt meant as a “trashtalking” my parents, its just that I can feel the “crack” in my family of origin)
There can be enclaves or castes without mass immigration. In fact, a bunch of suburban and rural communities feel like enclaves where no outsiders can feel welcome.
Critics of mass immigration or open borders have a point- in a world with global travel and trade, a country cannot work without controlling who can come in and who can work.
Critics of anti immigration politicians also have a point- blaming social problems on immigrants, fueling hate for people whose skin has a different tone, and inhumanely denying aid and shelter from refugees are not going to help anyone.
The world is changing and it’s difficult to cope. I don’t think that the enclaves of immigrants are the main reason of those challenges. It’s the loneliness epidemic due to social media use, the affordability crisis due to unchecked corporate greed with political corruption, and the collapse of perspectives for meaningful and lucrative careers due to AI and the corporate takeover of everything. Those changes are faster and more profound than a bunch of immigrants moving in next door, please look beyond them.
tbh as far as those lucrative jobs go, a lot of americans and western europeans also have some reckoning to do. especially in the us, a lot of those jobs come from selling a service to the whole world, which siphons a bunch of money from a whole lot of different countries into the us. so why should only americans be allowed to work those jobs? and if the rest of the world gets tired at that, why shouldn’t they just cut those companies off and make domestic competitors?
it’s crazy that we live in a world where you can do the same job as someone else in the same western coalition – and increasingly, in the same global trading order – and often do it for the same global companies, and yet, get paid wildly differently just based on where you’re from. as long as that is the case, in my opinion it’s already unfair to an immigrant that they had to immigrate to get access to the same opportunities someone else has by default. anti-immigration rhetoric is just deepening that injustice.
There needs to be a rational immigration policy implemented for the left to counter the only platform the right wing parties have today.
I struggle with observing the mass immigration as well. Partly, because we have housing crisis in my country and the middle class is shrinking. But I believe it’s a lot because of a rate of change. High visible and sudden growth in a minority population, which is tending to collect in enclaves because there’s a housing crisis and they can rent an illegal boarding house space from a richer immigrant. Enclaves tend to diminish the rate at which they learn local language and cultural norms. They get taken advantage of because they don’t know the language (someone helps them with eg an identity card but charges them thousands for it). There’s no real jobs, just bottom of the economy gig work. It’s not fair to them.
For the people living here they see a ton of brown people coming in and inflation and housing rising so fast and the math is easy for them to do (even if it is wrong).
It happened in New York with the Irish and Italians too. It’s not a new thing.
Why did the enclaves change your mind?
For a functional society, it’s members must share the same physical and mental space. Even if individuals radically disagree with the status-quo, they are still a part of the same in-group. I call it a “rebel vs invader” dilemma. Rebels can succeed in changing a society, invaders will be resisted.